Anita Hiles is an equal-opportunity mentor.
Naturally, the 10-year industry veteran readily counsels members of her 12-person Exit Real Estate Gallery team.
Just as willingly though, her door is open to other agents in Exit’s Jacksonville Beach office and throughout the company.
But it doesn’t stop there.
“I’ll help anyone who comes to me and asks for it,” she says.
Why share her secrets, particularly in an intensively competitive trade? Hiles says it’s because she loves her profession and wants to give back.
She benefited from the tutelage of a couple of top producers as she cut her real estate teeth in California.
“I think we are grooming the future of real estate — they are kind of like our kids,” she said. “There’s plenty of business to go around.”
While the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors provides education and guidance to real estate professionals throughout their careers, it doesn’t have a mentoring program.
Instead, many of the brokerages have their own training and mentorship programs, said NEFAR Education Director Cindy Foley.
Among them is Watson Realty Corp., which emphasizes the value of mentorship from Day 1 of agents joining the firm.
Trey deMoville, the company’s training and professional development director, said there’s virtually no way to advance in real estate — or any other career — without a good mentor.
“I have two mentors and they are far and away the biggest influence on my career,” he said.
Watson’s deliberate, longstanding emphasis on brokers and associates developing coach relationships is expanding. DeMoville is designing an active mentoring program for the firm.
He said a mentor’s greatest value may be holding mentees accountable — and that everyone needs to be able to lean on a colleague or boss for advice or a shoulder to cry on.
“You really need someone to help you navigate the path of real estate because there are so many things that can go wrong — jeopardizing your license and things like that,” deMoville said.
He says he thinks the industry’s churn rate — the number of people who leave the business — would be much lower if everyone had a mentor.
“I really believe that (people leaving the industry) is because they didn’t get a mentor to help them navigate the business,” he said.
Building relationship of trust and respect
At Watson, a go-to mentor is Mark Rosener, vice president and managing broker of the firm’s St. Johns County office.
“Mark really, really invests in his people. He’s a super developer of his associates,” deMoville said.
Rosener said as a mentor, he seeks to identify “what really drives the person. What attributes, skills, passions make that individual unique.”
He also works to help them identify their strengths and flaws, and set up a plan to minimize the impact of their weaknesses.
The real estate industry, in particular, beckons mentors, Rosener said.
“Being able to have someone that is totally honest and direct to guide you ... is very important,” he said. “By its very nature, the relationship is one of trust and mutual respect.”
Rosener mentored Keller Williams Realty’s Christina Welch in her early real estate days at Watson.
“He was my rock,” Welch said. “I literally asked him about everything.”
For Welch, mentoring is now a daily responsibility.
At her team’s morning huddles, agents share the biggest concerns they are hearing from would-be customers.
“Every single transaction, you’re running into things that weren’t expected,” she said.
Welch said coaching agents at all stages of their career is particularly important because “basically you are entrusted with people’s most important purchases of their lives.”
“They are relying on you for all aspects of finding the best property, negotiating the best deal and then taking them through closing,” she said. “They are putting a lot of trust in us.”
Paying it forward
A Northeast Florida native who was community-centric even as a teenager, Cole Slate already was well-connected when he entered the real estate profession.
Through his networking, Slate was introduced to Welch, who offered him a position on her team before he had passed his licensing exam.
He accepted in a heartbeat.
“When I first got into the business, I wasn’t necessarily looking for a leader to get leads from, which is a big motivation for a lot of people joining teams,” said Slate.
Rather, he was certain Welch would provide great direction for him.
“She was and is one of the top team leaders in Northeast Florida,” said Slate. “I wanted to know how to do the business the way it should be done.”
In addition to learning industry fundamentals and putting the right systems in place, Slate said Welch instilled “the value of actually giving a hoot about the customer versus them just being another commission check.”
Slate worked with Welch from September 2012 to April 2014. He’s now with Exit.
Welch remembers Slate having a strong database when he joined Keller Williams.
“We provided him advice on what to say to his friends to get them to become customers,” Welch said.
She still gets calls for advice from Slate from time to time.
And he’s paying it forward.
Through an Exit corporate program, Slate mentors about 14 new agents throughout Florida.
He regularly communicates with them, answering questions and offering tips of the trade via a private Facebook group.
“I’m often the first phone call they make when they are working on a transaction,” Slate said.
Teaching street smarts
Century 21 Lighthouse Realty’s Cathy Scott agrees with Hiles’ and others’ assessment that there’s enough business to go around.
Realtors being transparent with one another about their trials and tribulations is good for the industry, she said.
“And you never hurt yourself by sharing your knowledge with someone else,” she said.
A former law enforcement officer, Hiles likens mentoring in real estate to field training provided in police work.
“Anyone can be book smart. … I teach street smarts,” she said.
Hines advises newbies to the profession that if a mentor isn’t readily available, “go find one.”
She also says the industry should do more to promote the value of mentorships.
“People come to us as the experts, so we better be the experts,” she said. “And doing this job is a lot different than reading something in a book.”
Scott said she aggressively sought out advice from highly successful peers at a critical crossroad early in her career.
She had been juggling her fledgling real estate business with the guaranteed income of a waitress job.
But it wasn’t working.
“I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing (in real estate),” Scott said.
So, she committed to real estate full time and gave herself three months to turn things around.
“I figured that if I couldn’t figure it out in three months, it just wasn’t what I was destined to do,” she said. “So, I asked people if I could tag along with them.”
By the third month, “things started to click,” she said.
Scott said new agents should identify a successful agent who seems to have time to share.
“Just ask them, ‘Can I shadow you?’ Say, ‘I won’t get in your way and be a hindrance,’” she said. “And they’ll find out that it’s actually flattering to be sought out like that.”
Scott said a career highlight for her was when a former mentee, well into a successful career, thanked her for her help years earlier.
“It’s a great sign of respect and an awesome privilege to be called a mentor,” deMoville said.
Rosener says there is as much value to mentoring as there is to being mentored.
“As a mentor, I have a learned a great deal about myself — my own personal strengths and weaknesses, that I may not have learned otherwise,” he said.